After the argument
by aperfectsong
Summary: Missing moment from "Weekend at Barney's" because Barney's "I am a liar" speech didn't feel like an apology.


AN: This is a follow up to Barney's "I am a liar" admission. It didn't sit well with me. If I were Robin, I would have punched him in the face. I'm not super happy with how this turned out, but I wrote it to prevent myself from writing more "Robin can't have babies" fic, so it served its purpose.

They take only a few steps before Robin speaks. She is still holding onto the flowers, but looking straight ahead. Her head is tilted slightly downward so that Barney cannot see her face, though he does not think she is crying. Her boots click against the sidewalk. For a reason he never quite understood, Barney has always associated this sound with confidence and with purpose, as if women in heels never oscillated between what they wish they were and what they really are.

"It's not true, you know," she says in a voice just above a whisper.

It hits him then that maybe she is telling him he doesn't love her, that his admission is just one more lie in the long string of them that tether him to Robin. But before he can think of an appropriate way to convince her, she speaks again.

"You aren't a liar," she says. Her voice is unsteady now, and he reaches for her hand, but she pulls hers away, not a lot, just a couple inches, just enough that it means something. She still doesn't look at him. "You tell stories. You're an entertainer. It's not the same thing."

"Robin," he says, reaching for her again.

"I'm not finished." She sighs and he pulls back his hands, keeping them at his sides. He notices then that she is speaking slowly. He can almost see the ideas forming themselves into words on her lips, the deliberateness of it all, the way she is trying to talk to him, not screaming or throwing things, not running from him anymore, and he is glad. "God, it's just," she says, "there are times when I really trust you and I feel like we're on the same side. But then you do things like this. It was in your fucking play. _Burn the Playbook_. Why did you put it in there if you weren't going to do it? It was so deliberate."

"Robin," he says again, this time closer to a whine. He can hear the guilt in his own voice. This was not the way he wanted their engagement to start. He didn't want to disappoint her. He doesn't want to. He wants this to work out more than he has ever wanted anything. But a part of himself he can't control is bent on sabotage – because when it comes right down to it, he does not deserve her.

He was wrong not to burn it. He knew it at the time. He meant to get rid of both copies. He really did. But at the last second, he wavered. It was something more than nostalgia that stopped him, something more like fear, the fear that she would say no, or that just before the wedding, she would throw the ring at him and walk out of his life forever, and he would be left with nothing. The life he had made for himself after Shannon would be burned to ash and he would have nothing to go back to.

"It wasn't about the book until you made it about the book," Robin says when he doesn't answer. She stops walking. They are standing around the corner from Ted's apartment. Barney's phone buzzes in his pocket audibly, but he ignores it. Robin looks at him now, her mouth curved downward in a thin line. "Why did you put it in there?" This time her voice is low, quiet, but not quite a whisper.

He takes a step closer, but doesn't touch her. "You needed to know I was serious," he finally admits, looking her in the eye.

"That's what I thought," she says. She inhales and exhales a few times as if she's forcing herself to. She plays with the petals on the fabric flower and Barney watches her do it. "I think that's why it hurts so much. It was never about the Playbook. It was about you." Her eyes are wet, though she isn't crying. She shakes her head.

He hates that he is the kind of person who would do this to her. Who had no other choice but to do this to her, who wasn't strong enough, or sure enough, on his own. "Robin, I'm sorry," he says. He feels his own eyes growing warm, his own heart beating safe under his ribcage. "I am serious about us. I love you and I want to be with you."

"I know," Robin says. She runs her fingers through her hair and looks toward the street at the cars passing by. She takes in a deep breath and goes on. "But it hurts to be manipulated, Barney. It hurts to be lied to. There comes a point where just loving someone isn't enough. I need to be able to trust you, or I can't do this."

He feels the way you feel at the end of something, dangling from a rope stories away from earth; or maybe falling, the way it feels in dreams, as if he is both falling and watching himself fall.

"I messed up. I'll get rid of it. I'll burn it," he says. He knows he would do anything to fix it; he would get rid of the props, the costumes, his extensive collection of porn, all the things he has hidden at Teds', even the Storm Trooper, if Robin asked. "I didn't save the Playbook because I thought I would use it again," he says, whispering, as if a louder mention of the Playbook might somehow make her turn away again. "I meant it when I wrote The Robin was my last play."

Robin reaches up to wipe smudged eyeliner from her eye, but doesn't say anything. She looks at her feet.

"I want you to be able to trust me," Barney says, and means it.

Robin's face turns up to look at his, to judge his level of honesty, maybe.

"Then don't lie to me."

"I won't," he says.

"Okay," she says back, and takes a step toward him. The street light casts a gloss over her hair.

"Okay," he repeats and puts his arms around her.

She leans in to him. He can feel her lips and the cold tip of her nose press against the skin of his neck.


End file.
